Its an Android App by a company out of the UK called Chartcross that is quite awesome. If you ever get a chance to see it on a AMOLED screen then ake sure to change the color scheme to Blue or Amber. Very cool contrast example for an AMOED screen on top of it being a great GPS test app.

Excellent article as always Anand and very cool to take ownership of forgetting to includethe GPS test in the review in our current society of zero admission of fault and false sense of entitlement. Mistakes are very common and okay, what is indeed rare now is people that handle it like you did and also how ASUS has responded to all of this.Reply

Why is Asus trying to be just like appleA small black plastic windows wouldnt have harmed tablets aesthetics neither its design.Such a windows would also never had been noticedIf you are paying $500 and If Asus is expecting to compete with best tablets in marketI expect its allround performance to be atleast at par with the predecessorThats a dissapointment :(Reply

Huh? Even Apple puts a small plastic window on the back and concedes form to functionality sometimes. Asus, should have tested it more eh? But unlike when this sort of things happen to Apple and the whole butt-hurt internet throws a hissy fit, since it's not Apple's screw-up this time, nobody really cares. Probably because there'll be another model along before too long. Reply

People throw a hissy fit when it happens to Apple because Apple makes the only iOS tablet. If you want an iOS tablet (or phone), then you *must* deal with the problem.

When an Android tablet has this type of flaw and the feature is important to you, you can just choose to buy a different tablet. What you're seeing is the advantage of having choice in the market, not a bias against Apple.

And FWIW, I never understood why they don't just mill some small grooves along the exterior of the aluminum case, embed the antennas inside, and fill it in with rubber or epoxy so it's flush with the rest of the surface. Yeah it won't be as good as having a polycarbonate case, but it'll be better than mounting the antenna inside the aluminum case.Reply

Allow me to explain. Apple has a large part of the smartphone and tablet market, so an error on their part affects a LOT of people. They also get a massively disproportionate share of the press attention - mostly almost always very positive attention (unjustly positive a lot of the time). Asus owns a fairly small part of those markets, so it's not as big a deal to the press.

That being said, if you actually spent more time out of the walled garden, you'd know that a LOT of articles decrying Asus for this screw up have been written and a lot of people are angry and many are returning their Primes over this.

I never understood why metal is so often seen as a good construction material for devices that are full of antennas. As internal frame material is probably a good choice, but as a cover material?

If one were to pick the best cover material for phones, tablets or notebooks the first two requirements would be strength (mostly against dropping) and no-interference with radio waves. This would immediately rule out metal and glass and probably put plastic in the #1 spot. Unfortunately, both reviewers (not Anandtech) and the general public perceive plastic as low quality. The reason being that so many cheap products are made out of it.

This has put us all in the strange situation where expensive products are made of more easily breakable and radio blocking materials than low budget products.

Nokia probably has taken the right decision. Use plastic, but just give it a sexy name: Polycarbonate.Reply

But likewise, wool has negative aspects that can be rectified by adding a few percent of synthetic fibres (referring to it's behavior regarding stretching/shrinking here in particular).Also, all "natural" fibres can in theory be made in a laboratory. The only issue is that it is usually more cost effective to go the "natural" route.As for down feathers, there are synthetic materials with better insulation qualities (foamed plastics with more than 99% air in their volume) but they are even more costly than down feathers and are thus not used by the average consumer. :-)

Undoubtedly, plastic (or rubber) is a better cover material for items which can be dropped. Its flexibility means it can survive drops without structural damage, whereas metal will dent and permanently deform.

Unfortunately, people are really hung up over appearances for these products. They buy a phone or tablet which is already pretty rugged and will be replaced in a couple years, and immediately put a cover on it so as not to mar its surface. Plastic scratches more easily than metal, so the plastic case (even if reinforced with metal) is viewed as inferior.Reply

I just want to join in on this too... Plastic is GOOD for a phone or a tablet. One of the worst designs i've ever seen on a phone was the iPhone 4 / 4s. Putting a highly breakable material on BOTH the front and back of a highly mobile device is about as stupid as you can get. Yet reviewers, including Anandtech, dont mention this as a bad thing. Infact it's a good thing to them.Reply

Here's a hint: a high school knowledge of electricity does not make you an RF engineer.

What is going on in the antenna characteristics is VASTLY more complicated than the simple-minded model you appear to have in mind. To take one example, in most cell phones, the PCB ground plane acts as an important resonator element in the overall radiation characteristics. And, you may have noticed, once upon a time cell antennas were whips that were 16cm long (wavelength of 900Mhz is 33cm). Then we got to stubby nubs on the end of the phone --- now not even a nub. How can this possibly work given than antennas are supposed to be half (or perhaps one quarter) wavelength?

Yes --- if you had an antenna that was 100% enclosed in an aluminum box it wouldn't work. Since no-one is selling such a device, this fact is irrelevant.What people ARE selling are devices that have the front more-or-less transparent to RF (depending on the details of what is in the screen), along with various other gaps along the edges of the device. Given that you have to deal with the PCB ground plane anyway, you might as well make a virtue of necessity, which includes things like considering the resonant characteristics of the ENTIRE device --- and you can tune those characteristics using a metal shell.

Look, people, use some damned sense. There are MANY companies selling phones. There are MANY companies selling phones based purely on high-end specs. If using a pure plastic shell really made such a difference, don't you think at least one of these companies would be using that fact to their advantage --- telling the world "we don't follow fashion, we care about engineering and as a result our phone has a 10dB higher SINR than anyone else's"?Nobody does this because it doesn't buy you anything.Kindle Fire, for example, as far as I can tell is pure plastic -- but I haven't seen any reviews saying "damn, this thing has incredible WiFi range".

ASUS problem here is not that they used a metal shell; it's that they rushed a product to market and didn't do a good enough job of simulating the radiation characteristics for all the antennas. Reply

"ASUS problem here is not that they used a metal shell; it's that they rushed a product to market "...precisely. +1

As an engineer at a fairly large company, i almost always have to fight with marketing folks on certain aspects of design. If having a metal back is going to look better or allow for a design with a smaller profile and result in higher sales or a more distinguishable device in the gigantic landscape of mediocre android tablets, then I think it's a pretty simple decision for the higher ups.

It's not always about function. Form matters too. And when you swing to either end of the spectrum, there's always going to be people that object. Keep in mind the average consumer is probably not like you. They just want something that works and is easy on the eyes. Though ASUS messed up with wifi and gps, i appreciate their desire to at least try to balance form and function. Reply

When attempting to produce a device as thin and light as the latest tablets you need a strong material at low thickness. Aluminium is the goto material. If you want to use an engineering plastic, such as polycarbonate, IXEF etc then you need to add millimetres.Reply

"The only thing that ASUS didn't do was offer a return/exchange program for those users who felt they were mislead by ASUS' initially advertised specs."Here in Germany, when a product is advertised with having a certain feature and after you buy it you find out that it doesn't (this case being even easier since the manufacturer states that it doesn't), you can cancel the purchase contract one sided and get your money back. Only problem would be if you bought it from a less than respectful source (but then, why did you spend 500 bucks there in the first place?! :D).

Cases like these make me question why people want aluminum or other metal chassis in these electronics in the first place. Metal is good if you need electrical/heat conductivity, ductility or high resistance against force. Nothing of which is essential in these kinds of handheld electronics as far as I know. Good plastic can almost always be cheaper, lighter and just as sturdy. :-)

I hope those who bought this device won't have any trouble getting their money back if they want to. Reply

Of all the reviews, I found your review to be the most thorough and I thought it was the best out of all the reviews out there. But leaving the GPS out of the test makes everything null and void. There is a lot of great things about the prime, but the GPS is an integral part of the device and the OS itself. Many services depends on the GPS working properly. Location based services, offline maps, and photo tagging. These are some of the things WE use it for. Without a proper working GPS I would not have bought the prime. I own the transformer, not a great GPS, but works well enough, that's all I ask for. Now I understand that the GPS was missed by all reviewers out there...but you don't want to be like them do you? You take pride in your work so don't mess it up again. I even register just to comment here, but you should definitely change your position on recommending the prime. We early adopters cannot return it when purchasing from GameStop so Asus needs to give alternatives for us to return it. It's like a luxury car perfect in every way except missing a steering wheel.

Also, since you removed your prime, maybe you can go into more details on how to remove it safely, maybe with a few more photoes showing you pulling the front side off. And maybe recommend suggestion on how to improve the GPS reception. Not only that, you should have also tested the GPS with the back off and report if the GPS locks on faster, this way there might be a way to devise a seperate plastic backReply

Well I normally hate GameStop too, but they were the only place that had the Prime available for pre order. I had pre ordered from amazon, and they canceled on me. I big ordeal. Preorder from a couple of other places, got canceled as well. Only GameStop had it. I guess that is the price you pay for being the first few to get it.Reply

For a smartphone I'd agree but for a WiFi-only tablet I don't see the "missing' GPS as a significant enough feature to not recommend it. Remember that WiFi location services are still present and fully functional on the device. For most of what you've described, this is enough.

I sent you an email just before the first Transformer Prime asking you to do some thorough looks at GPS! ;)

I know the first review had to get to other details, but I was disappointed to see followup reviews had nothing about such a clearly stated feature of the device.

At this point, I'm starting to think it's a good thing I chose to wait instead of pick one of these up. It might have done well at some things, but nothing vexes me more than a feature that doesn't work as advertised.Reply

I even remember reading your email and thinking "I need to make sure to test GPS". Unfortunately I spent so long chasing down WiFi issues that by the time I finally figured out what was going on I had forgotten about GPS.

Unless you're in a rural area, you might as well turn it off if you are in the city. You'd miss turns in DC constantly since a good portion of streets are actually less than 75 feet away from each other, especially in the east.Reply

You said the aluminum case is blocking the gps signal, but it look to me the front face is glass on top of the antenna, when you use the tablet facing up or even 45degree, the signal will not have any problem go throught it.

or they use a piece of metal under the glass to cover the antenna? it doesn't make sense to me.or the glass contain lots of metal? doesn't look like it tho.or the antenna is directional and from the front view it face up? it's possible but why direct it to a aluminum side not the glass one?

I use tomtom gps it still work fine near the windows, in car or in building, I think nowaday gps antenna doesn't need to direct facing the sky to work well. it can pick up the reflecting signla very well, higher gain maybe?

again for the wifi antenna, it should not have any problem when put the tablet facing the incoming signal direction.

will it possible that the aluminum in it disorb the radio power a lot? thus making a radio-free field around it? a silly thought tho.Reply

It's unclear to me how much of a role the capacitive touchscreen plays in all of this (that's not glass as in a window pane that the waves have to travel through). Having one surface obstructed by aluminum definitely presents a significant challenge. Given the same Broadcom hardware is used in both the original Transformer and the Prime I can only assume it's the metal case that really limiting things here.

If the antenna is on the back side facing the aluminium shell, then to get a signal through the screen, requires the signal to pass the the circuit board which is filled with copper traces and maybe some solid layer of copper which is the same as trying to pass the the metal back.Reply

You sure could have saved me a lot of time and trouble by noticing the GPS operation, as this is one of my requirements. I've returned mine and hope there is no problem with the refund.

It's a little strange that a previous poster claims to have even emailed requesting GPS testing, but you just happened to overlook it anyway. But I will give you the benefit of the doubt as you usually seem to come through.Reply

I do actually remember seeing an email asking me to test GPS, it was something I had originally planned on doing but I ended up chasing WiFi issues for so long that it totally slipped my mind afterwards.

I guess for Android devices, things like bad UI performance or a "GPS Issue" are ok, as long as there’s an explanation behind it. "Sure it doesn’t work, but hey, we know why!".

With WiFi and GPS being borked, imagine the vitriol and outcry if it was the iPad. And yet people still accuse sites like AnandTech of "Apple bias" and whatnot.

The worst part is that there’s customers out there getting burned with it (not many of the "average" customers read AT) and the only sensible thing wouldn’t be to strip "GPS" off the feature list but to recall the product completely. A lot of the Android and iOS (and likely WP7 ones) make use of GPS, so it’s not really like the product isn’t crippled. And it’s a damn shame, because it would be quite decent—if it worked.

Also, why is Daily Tech featured in the sidebar? Its quality is utter shit and it makes AT look worse. Reply

I griped to most of the review sites after I found out my Motorola Cliq phone's GPS had major issues....13 satellites and no lock? Needs rebooting occasionally to get it to lock.It's my primary navigation device too, so it can get extremely frustrating.

Still, no review sites that I know of have done any sort of GPS testing w/ phone reviews. Given how important it is to things like Google Maps nowadays, it should be higher on the priority list.

Thanks for the article Anand. You've got a good start to a testing methodology for GPS reception. I hope you continue improving it...Reply

Guys,I follow Anand since his AMD K3 review and he consistently is one of the better reviewers for so many years IMHO. To the point of the GPS. I got screwed with the Galaxy S GPS ( not working) so the quality of the GPS is now on my personal checklist before buying a new tablet or phone. I even canceled my pre-order with bestbuy and changed it back to Amazon to make sure I know more about the TF prime before it is too late. BTW the issue was highlighted on the XDA TF prime forum in the last few weeks so one more reason to check all available sources before commuting to buy.

I think that the GPS test is often neglected in phone/tablets reviews and hope that this will change in the future but for now buy from reputable sellers with good return policy if this is an important feature to you (it is is for me). Reply

It took a year of custom ROM development before the GPS in my Samsung Captivate became usable (even then only when plugged into AC). I'm amazed that such basic functionality flaw got as little coverage as it did. Seems that reviewers are too preoccupied with, CPU/GPU specs, fancy screen tech & shiny "industrial design" features. Reply

Eh, for some reason everytime there’s a semi-decent Android product reviewed it gets a recommendation with a "it will get smoother in the next version (that you’ll need to get a custom ROM for yourself)", "these is not the GPS-enabled device you were looking for" and "it might be as big as your car and the pentile display sucks, but ooooohlookattheshinyoversaturatedcolors!!".

Seems to me like there’s an inherent hope that Android will crush iOS that’s underlying a lot of those reviews (not so much on AnandTech, granted). The reviews are mostly done by "fanboys", too, as any Android review by an iOS user (and vice versa) is labeled as either a troll or "butthurt fanboy lulz!".

One day, perhaps, there will be a webpage that offers a transparent judging criteria list where we can all go through the checklist and see how the conclusions were made. "GPS: broken, Smooth UI: yes, Social Media Apps: kludgy, Use of leather texture in the UI: excessive"—sort of like magazines did ages ago. And only "hard facts" points, no "Relative improvement over previous version: yes" if it still sucks.

Hmm, can't anyone with an android phone just use TetherGPS to pair their phone to the tablet and use the GPS on the phone for and tablet apps that require GPS???

It's been working on my Nook fine for months!

If I was after another tablet I wouldn't let this GPS issue put me off as I'm already carrying a GPS capable device around. It'd be a non-issue as I can't think of a time I'd be outdoors without my phone.

I guess there'd be a small hit on the phone battery but I wouldn't be too bothered about that either.Reply

there have been some reports (in XDA-Developers) that bluetooth interferes with the wifi. Have you done any tests of the Bluetooth - perhaps using headphones, mice, ...to see if it is not affected by the aluminum back?

I wholeheartedly agree. I'm not overly "technical" but for one am still really looking forward to the Prime but it really does rankle that it has this GPS issue. I can't believe that nothing can be done here - I appreciate that similar to the ipad GPS limitations little can be done in the short term re the existing casing design BUT surely Asus has a significant ace up their sleeve here via their existing input ports? Can they come up with some sort of sleek, aesthetic usb antenna/RF receiver that we could use to breathe life into the GPS on the odd occasion that we'd use it;- if you think about it that I feel would be a REAL coup for them in many respects. I for one have asked them to look into this via their Support/Contact us section and would urge like minded to do the same http://support.asus.com/contactus.aspx?SLanguage=e... Maybe with enough noise they'd listen do something hereReply

The WiFi and GPS antennas are on the front, just under the glass. I can see it being shielded if you hold the Prime vertical or with the back upwards - but in normal use, the GPS antenna should have clear view of the sky.

The capacitive layer shouldn't extend much past the LCD so it shouldn't screen the antenna either...

Hi Anand, I was wondering if you open the back cover of the transformer prime and test the GPS signal. i.e. did you get a better signal ? This is to confirm that the aluminum case is creating the GPS issue. What if you could cut an opening near the GPS antenna and put a hard plastic to cover the hole. Will that solve the problem?

Any comment on running an external GPS (usb) dongle from the Asus. I run this with my Panasonic Toughbook in the Outback of Oz with great success, in order to keep me alive.I wouldn't mind staying alive in the city traffic with perhaps the help of the Asus, which I could be carrying as an E-book reader. I have the external GPS mounted to the vehicle roof, so reaching for it when needed is a 'doddle'.Reply

Check out RapidProtect-- A best app to track your family, friends and business members with lots of advanced collaboration features. App is available at ( rapidprotect DOT net )Application is developed by Rapidsoftsystems (rapidsoftsystems DOT com) Company has involved in several big projects and having long history in delivery of successful Mobile apps for all platforms.Reply

Just received in the mail today (10-21-2013) the answer to the class action lawsuit against ASUS: external GPS dongle and a $17 check. Not bad, but considering the dongle was made in March 2012 it would have been nice to receive it while the Transformer Prime was my main device.Reply